


Coffee & Gossip (a.k.a. That Self-Indulgent Story & Sequel): An A Very Long Summer story

by calathea



Series: A Very Long Summer [10]
Category: I Want To Go Home! - Korman
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-12-23
Updated: 2009-12-28
Packaged: 2017-10-05 01:46:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 12,763
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/36435
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/calathea/pseuds/calathea
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This is an off-shoot of the AVLS universe, using a character invented in one of the Five Things ficlets (Todd, who appeared in "Five Guys Mike Webster Never Dated") and a character whose name is not entirely unlike Mike's, who suffers from mistaken identity after an article in a magazine in A Thousand Words.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Mark's Story

Mark was mostly asleep on top of his laptop when the phone rang, the jangling bell dragging him from a disjointed dream in which he was protesting vehemently at being forced by his Aunt Louise to join a kazoo orchestra run by monkeys. He was still mentally shaking off his bewilderment at the workings of his unconscious mind when he put the receiver to his ear and muttered, his voice husky with sleep:

"H'lo?"

There was laughter in the background, and then a man said, "Hi! Is that, um, Mark Webber?"

Mark glanced over at his clock, frowning when he saw it was just past midnight. "I… Yeah, this is Mark," he said, hesitantly. There was more laughter at the other end of the phone line.

"You don't know us, but we wanted to say," the man said, and Mark could hear from the shake in the guy's voice that he was trying not to laugh too. "We just wanted to say," he said again, and then a whole group of guys broke in, in a ragged chorus, "Nice ass!"

There was a storm of laughter, and some wolf-whistling, and then the line went dead in Mark's hand.

Confused, Mark pulled the phone away from his ear and blinked at it for a long moment, looking at the unfamiliar number on his caller ID. Finally, after the phone started beeping at him angrily, he returned the handset to its cradle, and, after another glance over at the time, decided that the prank caller had done him a favour. He had to be in class at nine in the morning, and he really couldn't arrive yet again with his keyboard imprinted on his face.

Yawning, he undressed down to his t-shirt and boxers, brushed his teeth desultorily and climbed into bed, dragging the rumpled sheets and quilt up over his shoulders. He was asleep in minutes.

* ~ * ~ * ~ *

The next day was so insane, between class and TA responsibilities and lab work and tracking down the person who'd stolen his office chair, that Mark had totally forgotten his midnight caller by the time he got home to his tiny apartment, his best friend Jessica in tow. It wasn't until he picked up the phone to call out for their standard order of Chinese that he noticed the light blinking madly on his answering machine.

Mark stared at it.

"Mark?" said Jess, coming over to see what he was staring at. "What's up?"

Mark reached out and pressed the button.

"You have twelve new messages," the machine announced.

Jess blinked at Mark. "Do you even know twelve people?" she asked, after a long moment.

He punched her arm. "I know twelve people!" he said, affronted. "I know way more than twelve people!"

She looked sceptical. "Uh-huh," she said, and hit play.

By the fourth message, Mark was wondering whether it was possible to spontaneously combust due to embarrassment, and Jess was laughing so hard she couldn't breathe.

"So, yeah, _wow_, if you wanna," the breathy teenage girl said on his answering machine, "I'd totally like, love to meet you. _Gossip!_ said you were like, Rudy's boyfriend, so I thought maybe you could bring him too, that would be cool."

Jess was still wiping the tears of laughter from her face after the twelfth call (nothing but heavy breathing) but Mark had moved on to more practical concerns.

"I need to…" he started, urgently, and then stopped and flapped his arms around vaguely, "I don't know. Change my number, maybe, or something."

Jess hiccupped, and pulled her laptop out of her bag. "Let's find out what this is all about," she said, opening up a web browser and pointing it to the _Gossip!_ magazine home page.

Mark looked at her suspiciously. "Did you have that _bookmarked_?" he said, staring at her.

She grinned at him. "Shut up," she said amiably, "At least I don't have three lolcat sites bookmarked, unlike some people I could mention."

Mark subsided, and watched her type his name into the search engine at the top of the page.

"_Samuel Davenport's current exhibition at Echo Galleries in Montreal is rumoured to feature a nude painting of_, hrrm, who?" Jess said, scanning quickly over the text, "Oh, some sports guy, I guess, Rudy Miller, never heard of him, _and his boyfriend Mark Webber_."

They blinked at one another, then Jess went to Google to look for the Echoes website, clicking rapidly through until she found the online catalogue of Davenport's exhibit.

They blinked some more.

"Well, there are worse asses to be mistaken for yours," Jess said, after a long silence.

Mark looked at the two pictures side by side, wondering which of them was the other Mark Webber, the one whose buttocks spawned a dozen phone calls from strangers. "They're…" he said, and then stopped, embarrassed.

"They're beautiful," Jess said, sighing. "Too bad they're gay."

Mark sighed too, and Jess poked him in the ribs, grinning. "Hey, this is your chance. You should take advantage of this guy's ass being on public display, get a few dates for yourself. The second guy on the tape didn't sound too creepy!"

"Yeah, and when I turn up instead of that guy," Mark said, nodding his head at the young man on Jess' computer screen, "You think they're going to stick around for a date?"

Jess closed her laptop with a snap and pointed a stern finger at him. "No self-deprecation here, mister," she said, and ruffled her fingers through his hair before he could duck away. "Now pass me that phone so we can get something to eat."

Mark passed her the phone and wandered off to the bathroom to wash his hands, looking at himself glumly in the mirror over his sink. Same old face, he thought, looking at the freckles sprinkled over his nose, the scar on his temple from where the school bully pushed him off the slide when he was six. Same old stupid hair that curled like crazy no matter how short he had it cut, same skinny geekboy body, hidden now in layers of t-shirts with logos for dumb bands.

He turned away. As he opened the door, the phone rang and his voicemail picked up. "Oh my god! Nice ass!" a disembodied voice shrieked, and the line cut off to the sound of girls giggling.

Mark turned and knocked his head gently into the doorframe.

"Wow," said Jess, from where she was stationed next to the window, the better to pounce on the delivery guy when he arrived, "That was a terrible flashback to high school."

The phone rang again, and Mark reached out and snatched up the receiver. "It isn't my ass!" he said, exasperatedly, in lieu of a greeting, "It isn't even LIKE my ass. So just, I don't know. Take your ass related comments, and shove them where the sun doesn't shine."

There was a short silence at the other end of the line. "Uh," said Mark, with a sudden sinking feeling, lifting the phone away to look at the display for a second. "Hi Grandma," he said weakly, pressing the phone to his ear again.

Jess only stopped laughing when the food arrived fifteen minutes later.

* ~ * ~ * ~ *

Mark was stirring a third spoonful of sugar into his morning coffee when Jess found him the next morning in their usual corner of the campus café closest to the Plant Sciences department.

"Did you get your number changed?" she asked, sitting down next to him on the sofa he had staked out for them and stealing a corner of his muffin.

Mike shook his head. "Three more calls last night," he said, tiredly, slapping Jess' hand away from his breakfast and moving it further away. "But the phone company want a hundred dollars to change it, and I just don't have it this month."

Jess looked at him sympathetically and patted his arm, using the comforting motion to disguise another lightning grab for a piece of his muffin. "So, what are you going to do?"

"I've gone unlisted," he said, and shrugged. "That was free. I'll just screen my calls, I guess, maybe turn the ringer on the phone off when I'm trying to sleep. They'll have to give up eventually, right?"

Jess nodded, sipping at her own coffee. "The website said the exhibit was only for another three weeks," she said, encouragingly, "And _Gossip!_ is a weekly magazine. People will have forgotten about it in a few days, you'll see."

He nodded, and set his coffee down to let it cool for a while. "All the calls were after midnight," he said, yawning, and leaned his head against her arm tiredly, letting his eyelids droop.

"And all good little botanists are tucked up in bed asleep by then," Jess said, linking their arms together and squeezing him gently.

Mark sighed. "Yeah," he said, squeezing back. "This little botanist, anyway. I was exhausted last night."

Jess made a sympathetic noise, but then stiffened suddenly. Mark frowned. "Jess?"

"Cute Biology Guy," she hissed, nudging him hard with her elbow, "Just came in."

Mark sat up hastily, opening his eyes and trying to look nonchalant as he reached for his coffee. He let his eyes wander casually over towards the door, where the guy known only to them as Cute Biology Guy was indeed standing, talking quietly to a friend, looking appealingly windswept and slightly damp from the drizzle outside.

"He's really very pretty," Jess said admiringly, in what Mark assumed she thought was a whisper. "You have good taste, even if you're kind of crap at that self-esteem thing."

Mark sank further into the sofa and tried to hide behind his mug of coffee. "Shut up, shut up," he hissed, urgently, as Cute Biology Guy glanced over in their direction. To his horror and consternation, Cute Biology Guy suddenly grinned at them, and Jess immediately responded by waving back cheerily.

"Oh my God, stop it," Mark said, aghast, but Jess just grinned, and after a moment Cute Biology Guy smiled again and turned back to his friend. Mark hid his face in his hands.

"Well, you've been gazing at him adoringly for months now," said Jess, once Cute Biology Guy and his friend were safely seated on the other side of the café and Mark had re-emerged from hiding. "Yet all we know after all that time is that he's in the biology department, and you only know that because you have some kind of freaky vision and read the title on the top of one of his papers that time."

She looked at him disapprovingly. "Yes, my freaky vision," Mark said, finally, "Also known as being able to see without glasses."

Jess adjusted her own glasses on her nose. "Whatever," she said airily. "I vote you go talk to him."

Mark scowled at her. "This isn't a democracy," he protested.

"Well, it should be," Jess said, decisively, and stole his last piece of muffin.

* ~ * ~ * ~ *

Mark was stumbling wearily towards his bed three nights later when the phone rang that night, and he detoured without thinking to pick up the handset.

"Hello?" he said, yawning.

"Hi," said a pleasant masculine voice. "Is that Mark Webber?"

Mark groaned. "It's not my ass," he said, "I don't know any painters, I've never posed nude, it's not my portrait in the gallery, okay?"

There was a short pause. "I. Uh. I know," the guy said, "Me and my friends were maybe kind of drunk last week, and we called. I just found the napkin Rich scrawled your name and number on, and I thought I ought call to apologize."

"Oh," Mark said, taken aback, "Well, yeah. Thanks."

"No problem," the guy said, and Mark could hear the smile in his voice. "You sound tired, I'm sorry, I hope I didn't wake you up or anything."

"No, I was just going to bed," Mark said, catching sight of the clock and then rolling his eyes at himself. Oh, I'm so suave, he thought, going to bed at ten thirty. "I, uh, I got woken up by the phone a lot the last few nights, and I have class tomorrow, and there's nothing on TV so… yeah."

He stopped, aware he was babbling, and the guy chuckled at him. "Hey, you can go to bed whenever you want," he said. "You have class, you said? You're at the university?"

Mark folded back a corner of his comforter and sat on the edge of the bed. "Yeah," he said, "I'm a grad student. Plant sciences."

"Oh, cool. How did you get into that?" the man asked, sounding genuinely interested.

Mark pulled off his socks absently as he talked. "My mom. She was an amateur horticulturalist, and every weekend she'd make me help her out around the garden and in the greenhouse, do all the heavy lifting for her. I guess I just absorbed it from her. I ended up more on the science side, though."

"She must be proud of you now," the guy said.

"She died," Mark said, with the same twinge of sadness he always felt. "When I was nineteen. It's just me and my dad now."

There was a pause, and Mark suddenly realized what a ridiculous conversation this was to have with a total stranger, and rushed into speech. "Anyway I--"

At the same time, the other guy started, "I'm sorry, I shouldn't--"

They both stopped, and the man said, "Sorry, I didn't mean to… "

His voice trailed away.

"No, it's fine," Mark said, "But, you know, I should probably go. To bed. And stuff."

"Okay, well," the guy said, "I just wanted to tell you I'm sorry for prank calling you the other night. So. You know. Sorry for that."

"Thanks," Mark said, smiling. "It actually wasn't anywhere near as bad as some of the calls I got. No heavy breathing, anyway."

The guy laughed. "I'm glad. Good night, Mark."

"G'night," Mark said, and slowly, slowly hung up the phone. He sat and stared at it for a long time.

* ~ * ~ * ~ *

He thought about his mystery caller all day the next day, about the guy's voice and the way he'd asked about what Mark was studying, and the way that Mark had totally failed to ask anything, like oh, the guy's _name_ or anything.

He didn't tell Jess, though, and he normally told Jess everything. It was, he admitted, because he was pretty sure she'd yell at him for giving out information about himself to some random stranger who'd gotten his name out of the phone book on the chance that he was the guy whose bare ass was currently displayed on a gallery wall. Put that way, it didn't sound very good.

So he hugged it to himself as a little secret: probably kind of a dumb thing to do, unlikely to be repeated, but nice all the same. It wasn't until the evening, when he found himself jumping and flailing for the phone every time it rang that he admitted to himself how much he wanted the guy to call back. Of course, this had to be the evening where everyone he knew called him. His dad decided to phone him to ask for advice about buying a new computer, Jess called to demand that he go see a movie with her at the weekend, and his aunt Louise rang to tell him that his cousin Brad had decided to learn to play the cello, and she and his uncle were thinking of running away from home as a consequence.

He was almost used to the disappointment by the time the phone rang for the fourth time that night. "Hello?" he said, peering hopefully into his fridge as he answered, as if beer might have spontaneously appeared in there since he last looked in.

"Hi," said a familiar voice. "It's me again."

Mark stood up straight in a hurry, bumping his head on the fridge door as he did so. "Ow!" he said, rubbing at his head, "I mean, hi!"

"Ow?" the guy said, laughing.

"Um, I was sort of half in the fridge when you called," Mark admitted, sheepishly.

"Midnight snack?"

"No, I thought maybe there was a beer in here," Mark said.

"And was there?" the guy asked.

"Nope, nothing but, um," Mark said, making a quick inventory of the contents of his fridge, "Soda, pickle, mustard, baking soda, and some kind of Chinese left over from God knows when. Probably whenever Jess was last here."

"Diet of kings," the guy said, solemnly. "Who's Jess?"

Mark laughed. "Yeah, or impoverished grad students," he said. "Jess is my best friend. She eats over here with me a lot."

"And leaves her leftovers," the guy replied.

Mark grinned into the phone, grabbed a soda and let the door of the fridge swing shut. "Yeah. Or, she leaves the leftovers she doesn't like, anyway."

The guy laughed.

"So," Mark said, sitting down on a chair at his kitchen table. "Uh. How was your day?"

He winced at how stupid that sounded, but the guy replied, without a hint of scorn, "It was good. I got a bunch of reading done -- I'm a student too -- and I had lunch with a friend of mine."

He paused, and Mark took a breath to ask about where he was a student, but then the guy continued, more slowly: "And I thought about this guy I talked to last night on the phone, and how he has a great voice, and how I wanted to talk to him again tonight."

There was a long silence, while Mark tried to recover from the sudden paralysis of his vocal cords.

"Okay, maybe I shouldn't have said that," the guy said ruefully after a while. "Did I freak you out?"

"No!" Mark said, hastily, "No, I. I wasn't expecting... I'm happy... I mean. I thought about you as well."

There was another, shorter pause. "Well, good," the guy said, sounding cheerful again. "Other than that, my day was pretty ordinary. What about you? Any exciting developments in the world of plants?"

"Not really," Mark said, "My aunt called to tell me my cousin started cello lessons. She says she's worried the SPCA is going to come arrest her for torturing cows in her basement or something. "

The guy laughed. "Not good?"

"She held the phone up so I could hear," Mark said, "Definitely not good."

"I learned the trumpet at school," the guy said, "My dad used to make me stuff socks into it to muffle the sound."

Mark laughed, and sat back in his seat, and for a while the conversation just flowed, light and fun and _easy_, in a way that conversation with guys who might be interested in him was never easy for Mark. It was a shock to look up and realize they'd been talking for almost forty minutes.

"Oh, it's late," Mark said, surprised, and then wished he hadn't when the guy replied instantly, "I'm sorry, I didn't mean to keep you up."

"No, I just. I was surprised, we've been talking a while," Mark said, hurriedly.

"It was fun," said the guy, "Well, I had fun. I hope you did."

Mark hurried to reassure him that yes, he'd been having a great time. "I should probably go though. I have to meet Jess, my friend I mentioned, for breakfast tomorrow," Mark said, regretfully.

"Yeah? Well, good night then, Mark," the guy said, voice warm.

"Good night," Mark said, smiling at the floor. He was just about to move the phone away from his ear when he realized something. "No, wait! Hang on! I don't know your name. I can't go on calling you 'that guy who phones me'."

"Todd," the guy said, promptly, "My name is Todd. I thought you were never going to ask."

"Todd," said Mark, "Okay, well, good night, Todd."

"Good night," Todd said.

Mark hung up with a smile still lingering on his lips.

* ~ * ~ * ~ *

"Hello?"

"Hey Mark," Todd said, and Mark smiled at the sound of his voice. They'd shared maybe a dozen phone calls over the last two weeks, and they were rapidly becoming the highlight of Mark's day.

"Hey, how are you? Did you have a good time out last night?" Mark said, flopping down onto his back on his bed.

"Yeah, it was okay," Todd said, "The band was pretty good, they had one song I really liked, and I got a cool t-shirt. You?"

Mark wriggled his shoulders into a more comfortable position. "Oh, I just stayed in, watched bad TV, you know."

Todd sighed. "Weak, Mark, very weak," he said, not unkindly. "You could have come to meet me at the show."

There was a long silence, and then Mark sighed too. "You said you were going with friends, I wouldn't have known anyone," he said, finally.

"You would have known me, gotten to know me, whatever," Todd objected immediately.

"I just," Mark said, then subsided.

"You just?" Todd said, his voice encouraging.

"I…" Mark ran out of words, and just sighed again.

The silence stretched out. "But you will come meet me one day," Todd pressed, after a minute had passed.

"Yeah," said Mark, uncertainly, "Yeah, if you want to, one day."

Todd cleared his throat, and then said, "So, okay, what were you watching? Tell me it wasn't anything educational."

"No, it wasn't. Jess complains if she doesn't have anyone to talk to about her favourite shows," Mark said, immediately, smiling again, and settled in to be mocked by Todd for his terrible taste in TV.

* ~ * ~ * ~ *

"Hello?"

"Hi," said Todd and sneezed down the phone at Mark.

Mark yanked the phone away from his ear. "Dude," he said, replacing it gingerly. "Did you call me specially to sneeze at me?"

Todd sniffed and blew his nose. "Very funny," he said, voice hoarse. "I am having a crappy day."

"Oh, why? Other than the obvious," Mark said, instantly sympathetic.

"I sneezed all night and woke up with this cold. My nose is all red, I look all pasty and sick, and of course, _today_ is the day I run into my ex-boyfriend," Todd complained, sniffing. "And he had the nerve to tell me I was looking good!"

Mark felt his stomach lurch at Todd's casual reference to his ex. He forced his voice to sound light and casual. "Maybe it was a compliment? Like, even with a cold you looked good?" he suggested while Todd carried on muttering.

"More likely he just didn't even notice," Todd said, balefully, and blew his nose again. "Unobservant bastard."

Mark couldn't think of anything to say, so he just hummed wordlessly.

Todd took a noisy breath, but then paused. After a minute of snuffling, he said, a little tentatively: "I'm sorry, are we not at the point where I can bitch about my ex? Never mind. You can say something bitchy about one of yours and we'll call it even and forget it, okay?"

"I. Uh," said Mark, not sure how much to tell Todd. He closed his eyes and then blurted out: "I guess, I don't really have any."

"You have nothing bitchy to say about an ex?" Todd said, half-laughing, half-coughing. "Oh, come on, no-one stays friends with everyone they ever dated."

"No, I mean, I haven't really. I mean, I... My high school wasn't very friendly to… to people like me, you know? And then my mom got sick the first time when I was fifteen, and she liked me to be home, and I wasn't. I mean, it wasn't like I had other places to be, and I knew I was going to need good enough grades to get a scholarship," Mark said, frantically piling up words to try to explain. "I didn't mind. I never minded. But then when she died, for a while I really didn't really want to... Things were kind of um, not-okay for me for a while. And by the time I was okay again, it seemed like... I thought, maybe I'm not the kind of guy who… I guess I thought it was too late."

There was a very long silence at the end of the phone, and Mark covered his eyes with his hand, his stomach churning. "I--" he started finally, but Todd's cold-roughened voice overrode his.

"Your mom was sick for a long time?" he said, gently.

"Four years," Mark said, tiredly, "Not bad the whole time, and she was in remission for a year in the middle, and things were almost normal then. But yeah, four years."

"Okay," said Todd, and sniffed mightily again. "Ugh, I hate colds. If you liked me even a little bit you'd come over to soothe my fevered brow and make me chicken noodle soup."

Mark took a shaky breath. "You'd just get food poisoning to go with your cold," he said, surprised at how normal his voice sounded. "The only kind of cooking I can do is the sort that starts with speed dial."

Todd laughed, and started to tell him a story about a dinner party he'd gone to once where everyone got food poisoning. Mark let him steer the conversation onto less dangerous ground, and was still smiling when he hung up, forty minutes later.

* ~ * ~ * ~ *

Jess was devouring ginger cookies when he dropped into the seat next to her in the coffee shop the next afternoon. She beamed at him, waving her cup of coffee.

"I tried to call last night, but it was busy," she said, through a mouthful of cookie, "Were you talking to _him_ again?"

Mark nodded, and sipped at his latte. "Yeah," he said. "Why didn't you leave a message? I would have called you back."

"And did he ask you to meet him again?" Jess asked, ignoring his question.

Mark blushed and buried his nose in his oversized mug.

"Aha!" Jess said, triumphantly. "Mark, tell me you said yes."

"I thought you said he was going to turn out to be the elephant man?" Mark said, frowning at her. "Or a geriatric? Or a crazy stalker? Or _all three_?"

She waved her cookie at him dismissively. "That was before he called you practically every day for three weeks," Jess said, "He's obviously a romantic."

Mark rolled his eyes. "What kind of argument is that? You know, sometimes I find it hard to believe you're a scientist."

She stuck her tongue out at him. "Whatever. He is. You should meet him."

Mark shook his head. "I'm not sure."

Jess sighed dramatically. "You're a chicken. Do I have to make chicken noises at you? Don't think I won't, just because we're in a public place and the hot tech from the Chem lab is over there."

"I kind of told him," Mark said, in a small voice, "About you know, being a dork in high school and everything."

Jess softened straight away. "Oh," she said. "What did he say?"

Mark shrugged. "He didn't say anything, really," he said. "He didn't seem freaked out."

Jess punched him gently in the arm. "Of course he wasn't," she said, "Why would he be? Did you say, about your mom and everything?"

Mark nodded, and Jess slung her arm over his shoulder. After a moment, he leaned in to her, and they sat comfortably entwined on the sofa for a minute.

"Oh," Jess said finally, "You missed Cute Biology Guy!"

Mark picked up his coffee and grinned at her. "I haven't seen him around for a while, I'd almost forgotten about him."

She nodded. "Yeah, he was at the counter when I was buying cookies, I overheard him ordering. Nice voice! Nice ass!"

Mark snorted into his coffee inelegantly. "Jess!" he said, laughing.

"What?" she said, and opened another package of ginger cookies. "He does!"

Mark laughed, and stole one of her cookies.

* ~ * ~ * ~ *

"Hello?"

"Hey Mark! You okay? You sound out of breath," Todd said, a thread of concern in his voice.

"I heard the phone from the hall," Mark said, tucking the phone between his shoulder and his ear, "I was trying to get inside before it went to voicemail. Hang on, I have to get rid of this damn sweater."

Mark set the phone down on his kitchen table and extracted himself hastily from his sweater, throwing it across the room and then snatching the phone up again. "Hi? Still there?"

"What was wrong with your sweater?" Todd asked, amused.

"It itched like a motherfucker," Mark said, scowling at the offending garment in the corner of the room. "I only wear it once a year, and every year I forget how uncomfortable it is."

"You have a special sweater for today?" Todd laughed

"Yeah, well, it's pink," Mark explained, grinning as he wandered into his kitchen to put the water on for coffee. "I'm not normally a pink kind of guy."

"Pink?" Todd said.

"Yeah, it's Breast Cancer Care Day," Mark said, spooning instant coffee granules into his biggest mug. "Jess and I always collect money on campus, and she says I have to wear pink."

"Breast Cancer?" Todd asked.

"My mom, you know," Mark said, setting down his spoon.

"And Jess makes you wear pink?" Todd said, sounding a little peculiar. "Does she wear pink too?"

"I just wear my pink sweater. It's not like, ruffled or anything," Mark said, uneasy at Todd's change of tone. "Jess goes all out though: pink boots, pink jeans, pink sweater, pink coat, pink sort of fuzzy… things in her hair, whatever you call them. You should have seen the looks we were getting in the café when we went to warm up after our slot at the collection point."

"I-- I bet. Mark," Todd said, "I. Listen, I don't want to push but, seriously, I so want to meet you. Will you think about it? Please. We can meet anywhere you want, I promise it'll be okay. You can bring Jess if you want."

Mark blinked, his hand pausing in the task of pouring hot water into his mug. "What?" he said, confused at the sudden change of subject. "Um."

"Please," Todd said, and there was a pleading note in his voice. "Please. We've been talking for weeks, Mark. I know you're scared, but I want to do this. Don't you?"

"I… I…" Mark said, and the kettle he was holding in the air wobbled, spilling hot water on his hand. He dropped it quickly, shaking off the water and swearing under his breath. "Sorry, I just. I burned myself a little."

"Are you okay?" Todd said, and it was the quick concern in his voice that convinced Mark, all of a sudden.

"Yeah, I'm. It's fine," Mark said, and then he took a deep breath, letting it shudder out of his lungs as his stomach tightened up with nerves. "Okay. All right. Where and when do you want to meet?"

"You should put cold… Wait, what?" Todd said, off-balance. "You mean it?"

Mark wrapped nerveless fingers around the warm mug, "Yeah. Yeah, okay," he said, even though he was already half-regretting saying yes.

Todd sounded bemused. "Um, tomorrow. Tomorrow afternoon. I'm free from about four. Is that okay?"

"Yeah. Um. There's this coffee place I go to. Um, it's near Plant Sciences. Do you know it?" Mark said. "I'll wear my t-shirt, the one I told you about, with the science slogan, so you know it's me."

"I know where you mean," Todd said, and Mark was heartened by the undercurrent of excitement in his voice. "So, at the coffee place, tomorrow, at like, four-fifteen, okay?"

"Yeah, okay," Mark said, "I'll be there."

"You'd better be, Webber," Todd said. "Don't even think of standing me up."

Mark's nerves ratcheted up again. "I won't," he managed to squeak out.

"Hey, hey," Todd said, "It'll be fine, I promise, okay?"

"Okay," said Mark. "So, I guess I'll see you tomorrow, okay?"

"Tomorrow," echoed Todd. "I'll be there."

Mark hung up slowly, and leaned hard against his kitchen counter. "Oh, holy fuck," he whispered letting his eyes close.

After a minute, he reached for the phone, jigging impatiently from one foot to the other while it rang at the other end.

"Hello?" Jess said.

"Oh God, Jess, I'm meeting him tomorrow, you have to help me," Mark blurted out, and then almost dropped the phone from the feedback when she squealed down the line at him.

* ~ * ~ * ~ *

By the time it got to three-thirty, Mark had changed his mind, at a conservative estimate, four hundred million times about whether to meet Todd or not. He and Jess were going to meet at the coffee shop at four, but he ended up leaving the lab early before he did irreparable harm to his experiments in the throes of nervous dread.

Jess was already there, reading an article about superconductors, a highlighter pen between her teeth as she made notes with a pencil.

"Ha!" she said indistinctly around her marker when he came in, "I knew you'd be early. Get me a latte."

He smiled nervously at her and went to comply, ordering one for himself at the same time.

Jess scrutinized him as he came to sit down. "Good, you wore your nice jeans," she said, approvingly, and he sank into the seat next to her. "How are you holding up?"

"I haven't eaten anything since breakfast in case I threw up," Mark admitted in a small voice, and slurped at his coffee.

"Um," said Jess, eyeing him nervously. "But you're okay? You're going to go through with it?"

"Yeah," said Mark. "I think. I mean. Yeah."

Jess patted his arm. "It'll be fine," she said, "If he's awful, we'll just run away, okay?"

Mark nodded, and Jess, apparently hoping to distract him, started telling him a story about something that happened in her lab today. He couldn't follow it though, and just nodded occasionally in what he hoped were the right places, and sipped at his coffee. Try as he might, he couldn't stop himself from looking over at the door every time the bell over it rang, his heart racing every time a new customer paused to look over the people in the room. He slumped back a little further into his chair every time their eyes passed indifferently over him.

"…and you're not listening to anything I'm saying, are you?" Jess said, and Mark jerked in his seat, turning his attention back to her guiltily.

"What? I'm sorry," Mark said, sheepishly. "I'm just…"

"Nervous," said Jess, and Mark nodded. She grinned at him.

"You're a good friend, Jess," he said, gratefully, and she grinned harder.

"Oh, just _wait_ until I tell you what I am going to make you do for me in exchange for this," Jess said, wrinkling her nose at him.

Mark groaned, but when she started musing on the favours she could demand, which grew steadily more outrageous, he took care to listen this time, studiously ignoring the bell over the door. Suddenly, though, Jess' eyes widened, and she elbowed him hard in the ribs.

"Holy shit," she hissed, and Mark, startled, turned to look the direction she was looking. The Cute Biology Guy was walking towards them, a cup of coffee in his hand.

"Um, hi," said Jess, as he came to stand by their table.

"Hi," the Cute Biology Guy said, holding out his hand. "You must be Jess."

Jess looked uncertainly at Mark, who was frozen in silence, eyebrows signalling wildly at him. "Uh, yeah."

Mark stood up slowly. "Hi," he said, suddenly calm and certain, his lips curving into the smallest smile at the sound of a familiar voice, at the smile on the guy's face. "I'm Mark."

He held out his hand, and had it quickly taken.

"I know," said Todd, and didn't let go of Mark's hand.


	2. Todd's Story

"Todd! Dude! Todd!" Rich said, obnoxiously, at Todd's elbow. "Dude!"

Todd ignored him, continuing to write neatly in red pen in the margin of a student's paper: _Excellent example! I would have liked more detai--_, he wrote. Rich stepped up his campaign for attention, punching hard at Todd's arm, sending the pen skidding wildly across the page on the final L.

Todd cursed and turned to snarl at his roommate. "Jesus, Rich. You couldn't wait three seconds for me to finish a sentence?"

Rich smirked at him. "Dude, no, I have _news_," he chortled, "I just saw your boy in the coffee place, all cuddled up on a sofa with a _girl_. So, ha! I'm right, you're wrong; your gaydar is for shit and you? You owe me twenty bucks."

Todd stared at him. "My boy?"

Rich made an impatient sound. "You know, the one with the curly hair and the freckles. I told you he'd turn out to be straight."

Todd's felt a distinct sinking sensation in his stomach. "Coffee Shop Guy? You saw him making out with a girl?"

Rich sighed overdramatically. "Hi, are you even listening? Yes, the coffee shop guy. And no, not exactly making out, but they were sort of curled up together, all very friendly, if you know what I mean."

"Oh," said Todd, and he looked at the essay in front of him, at the red line he'd accidentally left on the page when Rich interrupted him. He carefully turned it into an arrow, hoping the student would think he was pointing to the end of the sentence. He sighed and put down his pen. "Oh," he said again.

He looked up again at Rich, and tried, semi-successfully, to grin. "I guess I owe you twenty. Why don't I get the pizza tonight?"

Rich shook his head. "Can't do pizza," he said, and the gleeful expression on his face faded. "I promised Emma I'd go to this damn art thing, show, whatever, with her and her friends tonight."

He squinted at Todd. "In fact, forget the twenty bucks. I'll consider us even if you come to suffer with me. And buy me alcohol to help me forget the horror afterward."

Todd rolled his eyes, but then glanced at the small pile of student papers he had left to mark. "Yeah, okay," he said finally, "Why not? Leave me alone to finish this for an hour, okay?"

Rich nodded, and turned to walk away from the kitchen table Todd was working. "I'm thinking _tequila, _so we need to stop to get some limes," he said, his normal cheer restored, and disappeared up the stairs to his room. Todd sighed again, and looked back down at the paper he was grading.

"Oh," he said again, softly, to the empty room, his voice heavy with disappointment.

~*~*~*~*~*~

_Six weeks later_.

"Rich, have you got my blue shirt?" Todd yelled, rummaging feverishly through his closet, "Give it back _right now_. I want to wear it tomorrow."

Rich appeared in the doorway to Todd's room, leaning against the frame and watching while Todd flung a sweater out of the closet and onto his bed. "Dude," he said, disapprovingly, and Todd turned to glare at him.

"Blue shirt!" Todd barked at him.

"Whoa, wow, seriously, chill out," Rich said raising his hands. He disappeared from the doorway and came back a moment later, a bundle of blue cloth in his hand. "It's got tomato sauce on it. You'll have to wash it if you want to wear it tomorrow."

He narrowed his eyes at Todd. "Why do you want your shirt so desperately anyway?" he said, as Todd snatched it from him and examined the stain with a dark frown. "You can't be going out tomorrow. It's Thursday. You never go out on a Thursday. You always claim you're going to _die_ after teaching three one-oh-one sections in a row."

He trailed after Todd, who had bundled up a small armful of clothes and was heading purposefully down the stairs towards the washing machine. "You're so weird. One minute you're on the phone and the next..."

Rich stopped, a sly grin spreading across his face, and started poking Todd in the arm. "You're going to meet your phone flirt!" he carolled, "He finally agreed to it! Dude, no _wonder _you want your fuck-me-now shirt."

"Mark," Todd corrected automatically, slapping Rich's hand away and stuffing his clothes into the machine. "And yes, he said he would meet me tomorrow."

Rich laughed. "About time!" he said, and then his face fell. "Although, damnit, I owe Dave ten bucks now."

Todd added soap to his wash and slammed down the lid. "And you owe me forty bucks," he said, smugly, and set the machine going. "Because Mark is the guy in the coffee shop, the one you swore was straight."

He grinned at Rich's dumbfounded expression, and ran lightly back up to his room, taking stock of the piles of paper and books, the remaining heap of dirty laundry in the corner, the coffee mugs littering the desk. He went over and started to hang up the clothes he'd pulled off hangers in the search for his blue shirt. He should clean his room, maybe give the bathroom a quick scrub, he thought, hands busy, just in case Mark wanted to come back here. He turned to survey the room, mentally composing a "To Do" list and then paused, frowning.

He was getting ahead of himself, he realized, sinking down to sit on the edge of his bed to think. He didn't know why Mark had agreed, finally, to meet him, but what he did know was that it wasn't the same as Todd's reason for asking again. Mark didn't know what Todd knew, because Todd was an _idiot_ and hadn't said anything, and there was no guarantee that when he did know, he would be as thrilled about it as Todd. Plus, this was Mark, who Todd had sworn to himself he would be careful with when -- if -- Mark agreed to meet him, because from what Mark said, he was shy, and more than a little self-conscious, and maybe a bit embarrassed by his own inexperience.

Todd stood up slowly, and began to strip the sheets off the bed. He would clean anyway, he decided, because it couldn't hurt, and it would keep his hands busy while he thought about what to say, while the hours ticked slowly away. He felt his lips curve upward in a wide smile. _Tomorrow. _

~*~*~*~*~*~

The whole of Thursday was just one agonizingly long wait for four o'clock. Todd got through the morning somehow, ducking out of the house early before Rich could wake up and tease him, forcing himself to drink bad departmental coffee instead of going into the coffee shop. By lunchtime, he was jittery and wired, crawling out his skin with a combination of nerves and caffeine. It was almost a relief to step into the lecture room at one, even though three hours of drumming basic biology into bored freshmen wasn't normally something he anticipated with pleasure.

It went about as well as he expected: at least a half a dozen of the kids in each class spent the whole hour glued to their Sidekicks, the knuckle-dragger from the wrestling team in the second section who always fell asleep started snoring fifteen minutes into class, and the hockey guys in the third section made terrible urine-related puns while he tried to explain Mendel's experiments in pea plant genetics.

He was just about finished, fully five minutes before the end of the last session, when, to his dismay, a discussion broke out between some of the students. Normally, he wouldn't have hesitated to bring it to an end, but one of the hockey players, who he could have sworn had mastered the art of sleeping with his eyes open, asked an interesting question, and one of the girls on the front row actually _put her cellphone down _during the answer, and he just couldn't bring himself to step in. The class ended up running over by five minutes, which meant _he_ ended up running to try to get to the café on time.

Todd half-convinced himself during his frantic dash across campus that Mark wasn't going to be there, that he was going to be too late. He almost tripped over the doorstep into the coffee shop, eyes automatically going to the corner where Jess and Mark normally hung out. He sighed with relief. Mark was still there, nodding at something Jess was saying, his fingers shredding a napkin into a ragged pile of fluff.

Todd ordered a coffee, even though the last thing he needed today was more caffeine, and tried surreptitiously to restore order to his hair in the distorted reflection of the coffee machine behind the counter. He picked up his coffee with shaking hands, took a deep, calming breath, and, ignoring the barista's amused curiosity, walked over to join Jess and Mark.

"Hi," he said, and stopped, as Jess and Mark turned to stare at him. The next minute or so was very confusing for everyone, and Todd was never sure later what he'd said, but it seemed to work out okay. He found himself sitting opposite Mark, who had picked up his napkin (once Jess had prompted him gently to let go of Todd's hand) and was once more nervously ripping it into little pieces.

"You knew who we were," Jess said, suspiciously, and Todd grinned and sipped his coffee.

Mark looked at her, startled, dropping his napkin. He frowned thoughtfully. "You were here. You saw us yesterday," he said, enlightenment dawning gradually, looking at Todd. His cheeks coloured with embarrassment. "In the stupid pink outfits. You knew on the phone, when I said about what we were wearing."

He looked mortified, but Jess punched his shoulder. "Hey, my outfit wasn't stupid," she said, wrinkling her nose at Mark.

"It was, uh, noticeably pink, though," Todd said, diplomatically.

Mark ducked his head for a second and then started to laugh, grinning at Todd through his fringe. Todd caught his breath, and hastily picked up his coffee again. Jess looked at him approvingly.

"You should be very careful about laughing at Jess' pink outfit," Mark said, finally. "Our freshman year, we went out like that and my roommate made fun of her outfit. I don't think he laughed again the whole of the rest of the year."

Jess beamed. "Oh, yes," she said, gloating reminiscently, "Joseph. I'd almost forgotten about him."

"I doubt he's ever forgotten her," Mark said to Todd, with a grin. "He probably still shakes in fear whenever he thinks of her."

Todd glanced between them as they smirked evilly at one another. "Do I want to know what you two did?" he asked, smiling.

Mark started laughing again, and Jess set down her coffee and began to describe the terrible revenge they had taken, with periodic embellishments from Mark. Todd sipped his coffee, and laughed, and watched as Mark started to relax, meeting his eyes more often. He couldn't have repeated the stories they told him, so focussed was he on Mark: on the way he used his hands when he talked, the curls that tumbled onto his brow even though Mark pushed them impatiently out of the way every few minutes, the expression on Mark's face when Todd told a story about his own freshman roommate.

They had been talking a half hour, at least, when a large group of people walked in, most of them from Todd's Biology 101 sections.

"Oh dear," Todd said, catching sight of the crowd of his students.

Mark leaned into Jess to look around Todd towards the door. "Your students?" he said, sympathetically, then yelped as Jess pinched him to make him move.

"I should go anyway," said Jess, "I've got to return a library book."

Todd thought Mark looked a little dismayed when they stood up, but he smiled when Todd held the door open for him, pulling on one striped glove as they stepped out into the cold. "So, um," Todd started.

"Damn," said Mark, searching his pockets. "I've left a glove inside. Will you... I'll just be a second."

He smiled at Todd, and rushed back inside.

Jess pointed at him. "Wait right here, I'll go help him find it."

She went back inside too, and Todd grinned, watching through the window as she and Mark recovered his glove. Just inside the door, though, they paused for a moment, Jess' hand on Mark's sleeve. She was talking quickly, and Mark darted one quick glance out the window at him before answering her, smiling a little hesitantly. Jess looked at Mark seriously, and spoke again.

Todd turned away. He didn't need to hear exactly what was being said inside to know what was going on. He wandered along to the notice board pinned outside the coffee shop, and was idly reading through the flyers when Rich's voice interrupted. "Hey, Todd," he said. "Dude. I thought you'd be home by now. Weren't you picking Phone Boy up here?"

Todd frowned at him. "We met for coffee," he said, and Rich's girlfriend Emma giggled at him.

"Uh-huh," Rich said. "Dude, so it _was_ the guy who hangs out with the fat chick all the time? He's really gay? Because I don't know, maybe I need proof before I hand over forty bucks. You know how I hate to lose a bet. Maybe I won't pay up until I see him eating breakfast at our..."

Emma's eyes suddenly went wide, focussed on something behind Todd, and Todd didn't need the catch of breath from behind him to know that Mark and Jess had come out of the door in time to catch some or all of Rich's artless comments. He whirled around.

Mark's eyes were dark with hurt, the knuckles of his hand white where he was clutching his errant glove. "I..." he said, and cleared his throat, "You bet on me, on me sleeping with you? You said... you said that about Jess?"

"No," Todd said, too loudly, "Mark, no, it wasn't like that."

Jess' face was white with fury, but she said nothing, just made a little growling noise. Todd reached out one hand to Mark, but he just turned and started to walk away quickly, his bag banging into his hip awkwardly.

"Mark, wait!" Todd said, but Mark just hunched his shoulders and kept walking.

Jess stepped in close to Todd. "I should have said, it wasn't ever because of what Joseph said to _me_ that I went after him," she hissed. "I can't believe I just told him to trust you, to go out with you."

She turned and ran after Mark, calling for him to wait for her. He stopped, but didn't turn around, and she took his arm as soon as she reached him, leaning close as they walked away together.

Todd watched them go.

"Shit," said Rich, sounding ashamed. "I guess I... I fucked that up, didn't I?"

"You think?" Todd said, furiously. "Fuck."

"I'm sorry," Rich said, touching Todd's elbow. "Dude."

Todd shook him off, too angry to even speak, and walked away in the opposite direction than Jess and Mark had taken. "Fuck," he said again, as he walked, the word catching on the lump in his throat.

~*~*~*~*~*~

"_Hi, you've reached Mark Webber. I can't take your call right now, so leave a message and I'll get back to you_," Mark's cheerful, recorded voice said, and the machine beeped.

Todd sighed, and hung up again. He'd called a dozen times since he got back home, but Mark wasn't answering. He didn't want to try to explain in a message, but if he didn't do something, Mark might think that they were done, and no, no way was he letting go of Mark over this stupid misunderstanding.

He dialled again, and sat on the edge of his bed to listen to Mark's message, waiting for the beep.

"This is Todd. Hi. Um. I'm sorry, so sorry, that you heard that, but I promise you, it wasn't what you think. Rich is my friend, my roommate, but he's also an idiot who bets on everything. The first time I saw you, before I knew who you were, like four months ago, he saw how interested I was in you. But I... I have this tendency to be attracted to straight guys, and he bet me that you would be too. It was... it was forever ago, long before I started talking to you." He paused, sucking in a long breath. "I wouldn't do that to you. I wouldn't talk about Jess like that. Please believe me. Please. Call me."

Todd put the phone down and ran his hands through his hair. After a long moment he flopped down to lie on his back on his bed. Now all he could do was wait.

~*~*~*~*~*~

It had been four long days, and Todd was running out of hope. He took a break from the lab at lunchtime at Tuesday, wondering whether to just take off for the day. He wasn't achieving anything, and a headache throbbed behind his right eye, a consequence of too little sleep and too much coffee consumed while waiting for hours in the coffee shop, hoping Mark would come back.

He walked out the front door of the lab and almost ran into Jess, who was waiting, arms crossed, in front of his building. Todd smiled nervously. "Um," he said. "Hi Jess. Uh. Were you looking for me? How's Mark? Is he okay?"

"No, he's not okay," she said, unsmiling. "He's miserable. He went home to see his dad for the weekend."

Todd winced. "I'm sorry. Honestly, I'm so sorry. I never meant to hurt him, or you. I know Rich is sorry too. He said he'd apologize next time he sees you."

She nodded, and uncrossed her arms, seeming to unbend a little. "Yeah, well, I heard the voicemail you left Mark," she said, and looked away from him.

"Can you tell him again for me?" Todd asked, desperately, not sure what he was asking for. "Please? Just. Please, tell him."

Jess shrugged. "Tell him yourself," she said, "He's waiting in the coffee shop for me."

She walked away before Todd could recover from the shock, and she was already across the courtyard in front of the lab building before he found his voice again. "Thank you!" he called after her.

"Just don't screw it up," she called back, and then turned and vanished around the corner.

Todd _ran_. He arrived at the coffee shop flushed and sweaty, and wove quickly through the crowd of people waiting by the door in the line for coffee. Mark was sitting in his usual corner, looking down blankly at a book open in his lap. He looked tired and dejected, his freckles dark against his paler-than-usual skin.

Todd dropped into the seat opposite him, and Mark looked up, startled. He slapped the book closed when he realized who had come to sit with him, and fumbled hastily with his bag. Todd caught his arm. "Please," he said, "Just one minute."

Mark looked at him, his eyes searching Todd's face, and then he nodded. He settled back into his seat, and stared fixedly at his knees.

Finally given his chance, Todd didn't know what to say. "I want to," he started. "Can we. Let me start again."

Mark darted a look at him. "Start again?" he said, and Todd hated how sad Mark sounded.

"Yeah," he said, and tried to smile, "Like, okay. Hi. I'm Todd, Todd Philips, and I'm working on a PhD about the human heart here in the Biology department. I live in a house off campus with my friend Rich, who's an annoying little shit, but I've known him since I was six years old."

He stopped. Mark wasn't looking at him, and the line of his body was still stiff, resistant. He ploughed on. "I'm gay, and single, and always, always, the guys I think are hot turn out to be straight. So when I saw, a few months ago, this cute guy with curly hair in the new coffee shop that opened on campus, Rich bet me twenty bucks he'd turn out to be straight too, because it's a joke between us, how bad I am at knowing if a guy is straight. I looked for the cute guy every day, took my breaks from the lab when I thought he'd be there even though he'd never noticed me. I watched, and you... he never had a girl with him. So I was hoping, I was thinking of a way to come over and say hi. But then one day Rich came home and said he'd seen my cute boy with a girl."

Mark made a little sound. "Jess?" he said, softly. "She was away doing fieldwork during the week for a couple of months. That's why you hadn't seen her, I guess."

Todd nodded. He took a deep breath. "So I went out and drank too much tequila and decided I'd find another guy, and while I was drunk I ended up calling this guy called Mark, who was funny and smart and sweet," Mark started to protest, but Todd over-rode him. "And sweet," he said firmly. "I talked to him every day for weeks, but I couldn't convince him to take a risk and meet me. One day we were talking, though, and I suddenly realized that Mark and my boy in the coffee shop were the same person, and I nearly... I was so happy. I asked him to meet me, and for some reason this time he said yes, and I cleaned my house like a crazy person and washed my favourite shirt to wear, because I wanted to impress him so much. And it all went wrong, and I've been... I haven't slept properly since, because I'm worried I hurt you... him and he'll never want to get to know me better now."

Mark was watching him now, eyes huge in his pale face. "I," he started, and then paused, gathering up his courage. "Hi," he said, and smiled, "I'm Mark. I'd, uh, I'd like to get to know you better. If that's okay."

He held out his hand, and Todd took it, and held on.

~*~*~*~*~*~

Their first date was three days later, though they still talked on the phone every night and had coffee one day with Jess, who beamed at them approvingly.

"What are we going to see?" Mark asked, looking at the outside of the movie theatre.

"I kind of want to see something where things go boom," Todd said, contemplatively.

Mark laughed. "Jess recommended that one," he said, pointing to a poster. "She said the explosions were good, if scientifically implausible, and the leading man is hot," he added.

Todd nodded. "I can live with that," he said, and let Mark lead the way to the ticket counter. "Popcorn?" he offered, once they had their tickets. "Soda?"

"Mmm, extra butter," said Mark, and they went to join the line for refreshments. There were a lot of younger teenagers crowded around the server, and Mark was jostled a little when he gave his order, sending him stumbling sideways into Todd. "Whoa, hey," said Todd, and slipped his hand to the small of Mark's back to steady him.

Mark looked at him, startled at the touch, and Todd hastily lightened the pressure of his hand. Mark shivered, and turned his head away, but Todd could still see the flush on his cheeks. Todd's eyebrows shot up, and he grinned.

"That'll be eight forty-seven," the bored server said, and Todd turned hastily back towards her, taking his hand off Mark and reaching for his wallet. He handed Mark his soda and bucket of popcorn, picked up his own drink, and casually, oh so casually, allowed his hand to rest against Mark's lower back again as they walked towards the screen where their movie was showing.

Mark almost dropped his drink.

Todd lost track of the plot of the movie around the same time that Mark relaxed back into his seat and let his knee press lightly against Todd's thigh. He was hyper-aware of Mark, jolting with tension every time their hands brushed reaching into the popcorn bucket, when Mark let his shoulder nudge into Todd's. By the time they were headed back to Todd's decrepit car after the end of the movie, Todd felt like he was going to die if he didn't get to kiss Mark soon.

Mark, though, was laughing as he told Todd how infuriated Jess had been about the bad science in the denouement of the movie. "She was not happy," Mark informed Todd, grinning over at him, pulling on his stripy gloves as they walked, "She felt she had to spend an hour explaining why the explosion just wouldn't have happened like that."

Todd unlocked his door. "Did it spoil it for you?" he asked, when Mark got into the car alongside him.

Mark shrugged. "Not really, it was still pretty cool," he said, moving to fasten his seat belt. "But it made her feel better. Plus, I made her listen to a two-hour rant once about some movie supposedly set in a jungle, so I owed her."

Todd looked at him for a second, and then took a quick look outside the car. There was nobody around. "Mark," he said.

Mark looked up from where he was battling with the seatbelt buckle. "Yeah?" he said, when Todd didn't say anything more, and Todd leaned in slowly, giving Mark time to react, and kissed him.

Mark's lips were soft, unresponsive for the first few seconds, and then moved against his hesitantly. Todd broke away after a long moment, leaning his forehead into Mark's and sharing his breath.

"Come home with me tonight?" he asked, and kissed Mark again before he could answer. Mark tasted salty and sweet at the same time, and his hand had crept up to rest lightly on Todd's shoulder for balance. Todd lifted his lips from Mark's again. "Please?" he said.

Mark moved further away, looking searchingly at Todd's face, his face half-lit by the neon signs outside the movie theatre. He touched a finger to his lips, and then nodded. "Yes," he said, and reached out to kiss Todd again. His second murmured "yes" was lost against Todd's smiling lips.

~*~*~*~*~*~

Todd was willing to admit he'd spent a lot of time thinking about what he'd do when he got his hands on Mark. When Mark had just been the guy from the coffee shop, Todd had fantasized about threading his fingers through that curly dark hair, about finding out whether the freckles that sprinkled across Mark's nose were to be found anywhere else. Later, all he could think about was hearing Mark's voice, Mark's laugh, in the dark, half-muffled against Todd's skin.

Nothing he'd imagined, _nothing_, came close to the reality of having Mark pressed up against Todd's bedroom door, Mark's eyes half-closed, his fingers twisted in the hem of Todd's sweater to hold him close. Todd let himself be tugged in for another kiss, pressing his knee between Mark's and leaning in a little harder, trapping Mark between the door and his body. He broke away to breathe, burying his nose into Mark's neck and nipping gently at the place where his neck joined his shoulder. Mark made a tiny, pleased noise and Todd laughed, a soft puff of air against Mark's skin, making him shiver.

"Cold?" Todd said, teasing, and Mark shuddered again at whisper of Todd's lips.

"Only," he stuttered, squirming between Todd and the wall, "Only my hands."

Todd let his own hand glide down from Mark's shoulder, untangling Mark's right hand from his clothes and guiding it under his t-shirt. He yelped. "Yikes, you weren't kidding," Todd said, as Mark's chilly fingers settled against his skin.

Mark grinned, and turned his head to kiss Todd's neck. "That's why I wear gloves," he said, and moved his fingers tentatively, stroking over the sensitive patch of skin below Todd's ribcage. "My hands are always cold."

Todd grinned and kissed him again. "I'll keep them warm," he murmured against Mark's lips.

Mark wriggled again, pushing his hips into Todd's, and then moaned, biting his lip to muffle the sound.

"Don't," Todd said, sliding his hand around to tug the hem of Mark's shirt out of his jeans and feathering his fingers over the small of Mark's back. "The house is empty, you can be... I want to hear you."

Mark jerked against him, his breath catching in his throat, and Todd growled, and kissed him again, hands feverishly tugging at Mark's clothes, needing to be skin to skin.

"Bed," Todd said, breaking away to help Mark pull his shirt over his head, "Less clothes, and bed and... oh, yeah." His breath shuddered out.

"Bed," Mark agreed, flushed and a little shy, evading Todd's eyes. "Please. I'm not going to... I need..."

He stopped, frustrated, and started to tug at Todd's sweater. Todd let go long enough to strip off his own clothes, revelling in Mark's breathless moan when he moved back into Todd's arms, in the urgent kiss that Mark pressed to his lips. His hand skated smoothly down Mark's spine, fingers dipping under the waistband of his jeans.

Mark surged against him, and he moaned again, less inhibited now. "Please," he said again.

"Anything you want," Todd murmured, the words buzzing from his lips onto Mark's collarbone. "I promise."

"Want you," Mark said, pushing unsubtly into Todd. "Us."

Todd held Mark tight, kissing him fiercely for a long moment, and then took his hand to lead him over to the bed. Mark looked at him, eyes serious, lips swollen and slick. Todd looked back, and smiled, and pulled him down onto clean sheets to keep his promises.

~*~*~*~*~*~

Todd dropped onto the sofa in the coffee shop next to Mark with a sigh. He leaned his forehead on Mark's shoulder and groaned softly. "I hate Thursdays," he said.

Mark petted his hair absently. "Did the kids fall asleep in class again?" he asked, sympathetically, and reached for his coffee when Jess arrived at their table holding three mugs.

Todd sat up and took his own mug from Jess. "Only the usual snoring kid," he said, smiling his thanks to her, then settling back so he was pressed up tight to Mark's side. Mark leaned in a little closer, smiling into his mug.

"You should install an alarm," Jess suggested, sitting down herself. Her eyes went distant for a moment. "Or an air raid siren, maybe. That would wake him up. I could help you set it up."

Todd grinned. "Oh, tell me more," he said. "I _like_ your ideas."

Jess looked at him approvingly, and Mark started to laugh. "Oh, man," he said, "Don't encourage her. Next thing you know she'll--"

He broke off as his cellphone rang, pulling it out of his pocket quickly and frowning at the display. "Hang on," he said, and then spoke into the phone. "Hello? Yes, this is Mark Webber."

Todd raised his eyebrows when Mark made a little annoyed noise. "No, that's not me, I've never had my portrait painted, let alone in the nude," he said, sounding irritable.

"He's getting calls again?" Todd hissed at Jess. She shrugged and then nodded.

"No, that's really not me," Mark was saying forcefully into his phone. "No, I'm not... It's not me."

Todd stole his phone from his hand. "Hello," he said, smoothly.

"Uh, hello?" said a masculine voice, sounding confused. "Who are you?"

"I'm Mark's boyfriend, Todd," Todd said, politely. "What did you want to know?"

"Oh!" the man on the other end of the line said. "Oh, well, I was just. I mean, have you seen the painting?"

"I have," Todd said, dodging Mark's attempt to grab the phone. "It pales in comparison to the real thing, I promise you."

"Oh, _really_?" the man said, his tone sly, "Can I quote you on that?"

"Uh, I guess," said Todd, suddenly wary. "Quote me where?"

"_Gossip!_ magazine," the man said cheerfully, and promptly hung up.

Todd stared at the phone in his hand. "_Gossip!_ magazine?" he said, slightly dazed.

Mark dropped his head into his hands and moaned. Jess started to laugh.

"Oops," Todd said, after a minute, and grinned.

Mark poked him in the arm. "I'm going to make you answer all the calls after midnight," he said threateningly. "Or, no, wait, maybe I'll answer them. Maybe I'll find a boyfriend who doesn't sell me out."

Jess laughed harder, and Todd raised his eyebrows and tucked Mark's phone in his own pocket. "Oh, I don't think so," he said, and pulled Mark, protesting, into his arms to kiss him.

"No?" said Mark, emerging from Todd's embrace a few moments later, pink-cheeked and ruffled.

"No," said Todd decisively, and smiled back at Mark when their eyes met.


	3. 20 Years Later

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, the timeline is of course that Todd went to school with Mike (in Five Guys Mike Webster Never Dated) and then re-appears at their 25th reunion. The main story takes place 5 years after Mike and Todd graduate from high school.

Mark was contemplating his collection of ferns in his bathrobe when Todd found him. "I don't think this one likes the light it's getting," Mark told Todd seriously as he came into the room, stroking a careful finger over a brown frond. "I might have to move it when we get home."

He looked vaguely around the sun-room, as if searching for a better place. Todd watched him with fond exasperation. "We won't get there, let alone get home in time for fern relocation if you don't go get dressed already," he told Mark, taking his arm and steering him gently towards the door.

"You still want to go, I suppose?" Mark said, with a faint thread of hope in his voice that Todd had changed his mind.

"You're not that lucky," Todd said, dryly. "I indulged you over your school reunion--"

"We didn't go! How is that indulging me?" Mark protested, but Todd ignored him.

"-- and now you can indulge me over mine. We're going," Todd finished. "And I, for one, would have been delighted to go to your high school reunion." He finished with a gentle shove with the hand planted in Mark's lower back towards Mark's side of the bedroom.

Mark mock-shuddered, but wandered obediently towards his closet and stared into it. He pulled out a blue suit and held it up for Todd's inspection. Todd shook his head. Mark sighed and hung it back up again. "I don't know why you want to go," he said, shuffling suits and jackets along the rail. "I can't think of anything worse than sitting in my old school gym with people I haven't seen in twenty years. If I haven't seen someone in twenty years, there's usually a good reason."

Todd shrugged into his own shirt. "Curiosity," he said, fastening the cuffs with his favourite silver cuff-links. They'd been a gift from Mark a few years back. He twisted them neatly into place and smiled. "See who got married, who didn't, who got fat, who got thin, who's got nineteen kids and who's unexpectedly a millionaire."

"And who ended up living with a stuffy old professor of botany and a truckload of plants?" Mark said, his voice muffled as he poked about among his clothes. "This one?"

He held up a grey suit. Todd nodded. "That one."

Mark sighed in relief and threw the suit down on the bed. "I suppose you want me to wear a tie," he said, plaintively. "Have I mentioned that half the reason I'm an academic is so that I don't have to wear a tie most days?"

"Only about four hundred thousand times," Todd said, unsympathetically. He came around the bed and flicked a finger through Mark's tie rack. He pulled out a subdued maroon tie and threw it on top of the suit. "Here, this one."

"What would I do without you?" Mark said, with an edge of sarcasm as he untied his bathrobe. "Other than, you know, have a nice evening at home repotting my fern instead of listening to all your old boyfriends telling me how hot you still are."

Todd laughed and moved away to pull on his pants. "All my old boyfriends," he chuckled. "You have an inflated idea of how popular I was in high school."

Mark buttoned his shirt up then sighed loudly when he got to the top and discovered he'd done it up crookedly. "I've heard your sisters' stories," he said, unbuttoning it again.

"Oh well, my sisters," said Todd, dismissively, tying his tie.

Mark fumbled with the buttons on his cuffs and Todd came over to assist. Cuffs conquered, Mark draped his tie around his neck and turned to the mirror to tie it. Todd slipped his hands onto Mark's waist and watched over his shoulder.

"There," Mark said, still sounding a little grumpy, adjusting his tie slightly. "Do I pass inspection?"

"Mmhmmm," Todd murmured. "Do you really not want to go?"

Mark met his eyes in the mirror. "I'm just," he started, and then petered off, glancing away. He ran a hand distractedly through his curly hair, trying to make it fall into some kind of order. "You know I'm no good at this sort of thing."

"I've seen you work the room at the department socials a million times," Todd objected.

"That's different," said Mark, frustrated. "I can always talk about stuff, plants and the department and university politics and everything. I can't talk about plants with your high school friends."

Todd tightened his hands at Mark's waist and turned him around. "You're brilliant and successful and good-looking," he said, firmly, forestalling Mark's immediate objection with a quick kiss. "No, you are, shut up. Everyone will wish they were as lucky as me, even if you tell everyone about your ferns for an hour."

Mark sighed, and then smiled ruefully. He leaned his forehead against Todd's shoulder. "You're good for my ego," he said.

"I'm just good for you," Todd responded, and stepped away reluctantly. "Come on, get your jacket, let's go make some people jealous."

Mark grabbed his jacket. "Are we making anyone in particular jealous?" he asked, as they left the bedroom and headed out to the car.

Todd threw him the keys and settled into the passenger seat. "Make sure you look especially gorgeous and desirable around this guy who was the lust of my life the last year at school. He turned me down saying he wasn't gay and ended up hooking up with some sports guy the minute he moved away from home."

Mark blinked at him as he buckled up his seat belt. "The lust of your life?" he echoed. "What was his name?"

Todd shrugged. "Can't remember!" he responded cheerfully. "It'll come back to me when I see his name tag. If he's even there, of course!"

Mark started the engine. "I could probably work myself to objecting to not being the lust of your life," he pointed out, turning carefully out onto the road outside their house.

Todd shrugged. "No-one lusts like a teenage boy," he said. "I was over that by the time I met you."

Mark laughed. "That is not how I remember it!" he said, flicking an amused glance over at Todd as he drove.

"Well, maybe not totally over it," Todd admitted. "But you were, are, the love of my life. Way more impressive than lust."

Mark made a little noise of embarrassed pleasure, and, once they were safely onto the highway, reached out to touch Todd's hand. Todd clasped his fingers for a moment before letting go so that Mark could return his hands to the wheel.

It was quiet in the car for a few minutes. Finally Mark broke the silence. "We can leave early, right?"

"Worried about your fern?" Todd said, teasingly.

 

"Thinking about how to show you that you're the lust and love of my life," Mark said, flushing pink as he said it.

Todd's eyes widened. "Yeah?" he said.

Mark glanced over at him. "Yeah."

Todd started to grin. "Turn around," he said, urgently, "Or, take the next exit, go home the back way."

Mark looked over again. "What?" he said, surprised. "Seriously?"

Todd laid his hand on Mark's thigh. "Oh, hell yes," he said. "You think I'd turn down an offer like that?"

Mark grinned hugely, and then started to laugh. "If I'd known you were this easy," he said.

Todd let his fingers slip higher, and Mark gasped, changed lanes and started to indicate to leave the highway.

"Not that easy," Todd said, "We'll go to my twenty-fifth instead!"


End file.
